The Brotherhood Conspiracy

by Brennan, Terry

  Rodriguez handed each man a printout. “This is in chapter two of Second Maccabees,” he said. “This translation is from what’s called the Good News version . . . written in more contemporary language.

  “We know from the records that Jeremiah the prophet instructed the people who were being taken into exile to hide some of the fire from the altar, as we have just mentioned. We also know that he taught them God’s Law and warned them not to be deceived by the ornamented gold and silver idols which they would see in the land of their exile. And then he urged them never to abandon the Law.

  “These same records also tell us that Jeremiah, acting under divine guidance, commanded the Tent of the Lord’s Presence and the Covenant Box to follow him to the mountain where Moses had looked down on the land which God had promised our people. When Jeremiah got to the mountain, he found a huge cave and there he hid the Tent of the Lord’s Presence, the Covenant Box, and the altar of incense. Then he sealed up the entrance.”

  “So, you see,” said Rizzo, “look to the prophets for your direction!” He took a step into the center of the room, puffed up his chest, his thumbs stretching his suspender straps away from his body. As punctuation, he let the suspenders fly. “Ouch! Ewwww . . . that smarts. Okay . . . the Bible says Jeremiah took the tent and buried it on Moses’ mountain, right? Well, after that, Jeremiah and a bunch of his Jerusalem buddies got outta Dodge before the Babylonians could come back and take them into exile. Wher-r-r-e?” Rizzo gave them his best crazed Jack Nicholson smile. “In Egypt! So, there’s our answer, right?”

  “Well, actually,” said Brandon McDonough, “these verses are talking about Mount Nebo, in Jordan. Mount Nebo is the mountain Moses stood atop to look over the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. God didn’t permit Moses to enter the Promised Land because of his disobedience. So, tradition and the Bible tell us, Moses died and was buried on Mount Nebo. And that’s where Maccabees tells us Jeremiah buried the Tent and the Ark of the Covenant.”

  “It’s been at least twenty-five hundred years,” Bohannon said, shaking his head. “If the location of the Tent and the Ark are so clearly indicated, why hasn’t anyone found it?”

  “Several possibilities come to mind,” said Doc Johnson, stretching his long body. “Perhaps it has been found . . . destroyed . . . lost. Or, decayed beyond recognition. Perhaps it was never hidden there in the first place. Perhaps the text itself gives us an answer. If we are to believe what is written in the Bible, then God will not allow the Tent and the Ark to be discovered until he gathers his people together and the dazzling light of his presence comes in the clouds—language very much of the prophesied second coming of the Christ. I don’t believe the world has yet seen this dazzling light of God’s return.”

  Johnson got up and approached the whiteboard Rodriguez pulled into the room with them. “So, if we’re looking for clues to the location of the Tent of Meeting, we first need to consider Tripoli, in Lebanon,” he said, writing the name at the top left of the board. “That’s where Abiathar fled when the Crusaders sacked Jerusalem. And there must be a reason he traveled to Tripoli. It’s twice as far from Jerusalem as Tyre, where he and his community first fled when the Seljuk Turks invaded. Why did he go that far? What’s in Tripoli? More important, if Abiathar did have a back-up plan, did he leave us any clues in Tripoli?”

  Johnson drew a vertical line from the top of the board to the bottom.

  “Now, we have a second possibility . . . the Maccabees verse that identifies Mount Nebo as the place where Jeremiah concealed the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant.” Johnson wrote Mount Nebo at the top of the second column.

  “Holy Spielberg!” sputtered Rizzo, pointing at the board. “The Ark of the Covenant! Hey, this has movie rights written all over it. Listen.” He swung his arm and pointed his pudgy finger at Bohannon. “I got dibs on playing Indiana Jones, okay?” Rizzo jumped up and stood on top of the chair that once held his body. “I always wanted a whip. Hiiiyaaaa!”

  Rizzo had a valid point.

  “Wait a minute,” said Bohannon. “Do we really want to admit to ourselves that we’re chasing the Ark of the Covenant? Much as I hate to admit it, Sammy is right. This is the stuff of high-decibel, Saturday matinee adventure movies. The Ark has been pursued for nearly three thousand years.”

  “And it hasn’t been found,” said Rodriguez.

  “Yeah . . . but—”

  “But there are other possibilities as well,” Doc Johnson interrupted. “One of which Brandon suggested a few days ago as we examined the exterior of the mezuzah, one that I’ve been following up over the last two days. And, while I haven’t found any connection to Jeremiah, there may be a connection to some other acquaintances of ours.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Rizzo.

  Doc stared down the slope of his aquiline nose at Rizzo. “Simply the Prophet’s Guard, that’s all,” said Doc. “Simply those blood-thirsty beasts with that wretched amulet around their necks . . . the ones who killed Winthrop and who would likely kill us if they could get their hands on us. That’s all. I think I may have found a connection between the mezuzah and the Prophet’s Guard.”

  As Doc spread the black velvet cloth over an empty portion of Joe Rodriguez’s desk, he was surprised—stunned, actually. There it was. Small, but undeniably present. Lurking in the suburbs of his consciousness, tucked into an alley around the corner of his heart. A flicker of excitement. The tickle of anticipation. A drip of adrenaline. The thrill of the search was emerging once again, encapsulating his grief, shading his guilt.

  Dr. Richard Johnson knew it was unlikely he would ever forgive himself for the death of Winthrop Larsen. In his mind, he was just as responsible as the men with the Coptic cross amulet with the lightning bolt slashing through on the diagonal—the ones who rigged Winthrop’s van with the bomb.

  Sure, he was attacked. So was Tom . . . and his daughter. They were all in danger during that insane week in, and under, Jerusalem. But Winthrop . . . Winthrop was innocent. Special. Gifted. He never should have . . .

  Doc placed Abiathar’s mezuzah on top of the black velvet cloth, chasing away the devil of his thoughts. He pulled two large, powerful magnifying glasses out of his bag and set them alongside the bronze cylinder. He looked at the palms of his hands . . . they were moist with perspiration. His throat was dry. He felt like a first-year professor again, suffering the ever-present anxiety attacks before stepping behind the lectern. I’m a fraud, Doc would tell himself in those days. What do I know? What do I have to tell these students that is worth anything?

  He rubbed his hands against his well-pressed khaki slacks. Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to get involved again . . . take these risks again? The pounding of his heart was so strong he felt as if his eyeballs were thumping along with the beat.

  Johnson took a deep breath, trying to breathe away his anxiety. Then he stepped out.

  “At Brandon’s suggestion, I studied the etching on the outside of the mezuzah, looking for a clue or a pattern. We know that Abiathar and Meborak developed a code, using the extinct Demotic language, for conducting their most important and secret communications.

  “Therefore,” said Doc, looking around the desk, “I believed it also a fair assumption that if there was any message or clue or direction on the mezuzah, it would likely also be in some form of code, and probably in Demotic.

  “First, we have to start with the base understanding that Abiathar and Meborak were residents of the eleventh century. Unfortunately, Mr. Rizzo, that is about seventeen hundred years after Jeremiah and the other exiles fled from Jerusalem to Egypt. So, the history of Jeremiah the prophet was certainly well known by both of these leaders in the Jewish community. I think it’s also a fair assumption that both Abiathar and Meborak were aware of the story in Maccabees—written about 125 BC—that Jeremiah buried the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant on Mount Nebo.

  “Remember the stone stellae we found in the Hall of the Sanhedrin?
It was Meborak laying out the code for Abiathar’s use. Now, it’s possible that the code may have come down to Meborak from Jeremiah, but, for our purposes, it really doesn’t matter where it began. The question in my mind was whether I should be looking for Demotic symbols on the outside of the mezuzah.”

  Doc grabbed the knurled end of the shaft that passed through the middle of the mezuzah and gave it a twirl. Without the scroll inside, the shaft spun easily.

  “Well,” Tom broke in, “did you find any?”

  A knowing, satisfied smile spread across Johnson’s face. “No,” he said, tapping the side of the cylinder, “but I have discovered something equally interesting.”

  Doc reached into his bag again and pulled out a rolled up piece of art paper, slightly longer than the mezuzah itself. As he spread out the sheet, he anchored the corners with items from Joe’s desk. On the white paper was a rubbing . . . a picture of the etchings on the surface of the mezuzah made by tightly wrapping the paper around the outside of the cylinder, securing it, and then rubbing against the paper with a piece of carbon.

  Doc pointed at the image on the paper. “It wasn’t until I looked at everything on a flat surface that I understood.”

  Doc pulled a sharpened Ticonderoga #2 from the pocket of his blue, button-down oxford shirt, leaned on the desk, and began to trace the course of his journey of discovery.

  “You can see the predominant design—branches and leaves that curve and swirl all around the outside of the cylinder. Looks like it’s meant to depict vines, perhaps grape vines.” Doc moved his pencil point. “Then there are these obvious animal shapes that are rather large, a lion on one side and a lamb on the opposite. Then . . . can you see there . . . flanking the animal shapes are two arcs of letters, one on each side.”

  Johnson glanced up at the faces surrounding the desk. “Do they look familiar?”

  “It’s aleph and resh,” said Rodriguez, “that’s Abiathar’s signature. He put his hallmark on the scroll. And he put his signature on the mezuzah, as well. That’s our guy.”

  “But that doesn’t get us anywhere,” said Bohannon. “That’s no surprise.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Doc agreed. “But this was.”

  Johnson picked up the mezuzah and handed it to Bohannon. “Examine the mezuzah closely and tell me what you find.”

  Bohannon took the brass cylinder in both hands, hefted it. He picked up one of the magnifying glasses and launched into a vigorous examination of the cylinder’s surface. Around once . . . twice. The second time, he stopped, put down the magnifying glass, and rubbed his fingers against the etched ridges.

  Doc wasn’t sure if Bohannon had figured it out until he saw Tom close his eyes and take both his thumbs and rub them along the surface of the cylinder. Like a blind man reading Braille, Bohannon rubbed his thumbs back and forth over the etched surface. His eyes still closed, he addressed Doc Johnson.

  “Some of these markings”—Bohannon’s thumbs still worked the surface—“these tau symbols, the palm trees, they’re different. The edges are different. They feel different.” He opened his eyes. “Now that I know, they even look different.” Bohannon handed the mezuzah to Rodriguez, reaching over Rizzo’s upraised arms.

  “Hey, watch it,” Rizzo deadpanned. “You guys are discriminating against a minority here.” Rizzo turned back to Johnson. “So, what does it mean?”

  “I’ll tell you what it means. But it cost me a great deal of pride to find out.”

  ONE WEEK EARLIER

  Philadelphia, PA

  The circular expanse of the Chinese Rotunda surrounded Johnson as he and McDonough crossed the dark tile floor toward the Egyptian wing of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Trailing in the formidable wake of Joshua Silver, being in his presence again, Johnson’s fragile ego fed a growing anger.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think your boy Abiathar is responsible for the markings on the outside of this mezuzah,” said Silver as he led them from his office. “At least not all of them.”

  Dr. Silver, curator-in-charge of the Egyptian collection at the University of Pennsylvania museum, ducked to his right and entered an arched stone landing, stone stairs leading down to his left. Before he could blink, Johnson lost sight of his long-standing nemesis.

  Johnson grabbed McDonough by the arm, halting him in the curve of the arch. “You see,” Johnson said, “I told you this would be a waste of time. Silver doesn’t care about anything except his own rising star—which should crash under the weight of all his grandstanding, publicity-hogging personal posturing. Let alone his faulty thinking.”

  “Aye . . . you had me shakin’ there, love.” McDonough patted the hand on his arm. “Just because Silver unearthed the royal tomb of Senwosret III before you got to the Valley of the Kings is no reason to demean the work of the museum. The university has done extraordinary work in Egypt for more than a century. And Dr. Silver has helped this museum remain one of the finest archaeology museums in the world, you know that. Set aside your ego for a moment, Richard. Joshua is a good man, and a good scientist. And he thinks he may be able to help.”

  “Are you two coming?” Silver’s voice echoed off the curving stone walls of the stairway.

  McDonough removed his arm from Johnson’s grasp and scrambled down the circular stone steps.

  Silver was waiting at the bottom in a dimly lit room filled with display cases. “From what you told me in your email, and what I could see on the attachment of the mezuzah rubbing, I really think your hypothesis is faulty,” he said, further fueling Johnson’s ire. “What was the primary passion of Abiathar’s life? To rebuild the Temple? No! It was to restore the ritual sacrifices of Israel. Without sacrifice, without what the Jews believed was the manifest presence of God, the Temple is just another building.”

  Johnson shook his head dismissively as Silver turned and walked away between the cases. “Quite original thinking, Joshua,” Johnson mumbled. “Always the obvious and easiest answer—sound-bite archaeology.”

  Josh Silver was twenty years younger and one hundred pounds heavier than Johnson. So, when his antagonist stopped, spun on his heel, and took a step toward him, Johnson’s breath caught in his throat and he struggled to hold his ground.

  “Richard, ya gotta let it go.”

  Both broad-shouldered and thick at the waist, with a bushy reddish-brown beard and wild shock of hair, at six-six Josh Silver had the bulk and mangy hide of an angered brown bear.

  “I didn’t jump the gun at Abydos. We were all waiting for you and your team to arrive before we started digging. Then that fool backed a truck into the side of the mound and we found ourselves staring down an entry shaft. What would you have done? Wait around and hope nobody went for a late night stroll and corrupted the site? C’mon, you would have done the same thing we did—run down that shaft to see what lay at the other end. So, give me a break, will ya?”

  Just as quickly, Silver was off again, pounding down the aisle between partially unwrapped mummies who now lived under airtight glass canopies.

  “Gets a bit complicated, doesn’t it, now?” quipped McDonough as he followed the museum’s curator.

  Plotting his revenge while looking for an exit, Johnson trailed his colleagues.

  Silver rested against a desk at the end of the aisle, folded his arms over his significant chest, and allowed a smile to widen the only gap between his whiskers. The smile infuriated Johnson more than the man himself.

  “Can I see the mezuzah . . . please?”

  Johnson reached into the padded leather case that hung over his left shoulder, withdrew the wrapped mezuzah, and handed it to Silver.

  The bearlike scientist rested the bronze cylinder on the desk with the gentleness of a nurse with a newborn, unwrapping it and setting it on a thick cloth. He picked up a magnifying glass. With a deft touch, Silver rotated the mezuzah slowly, searching every inch of its surface.

  “You’ve already identified the aleph and resh figures that arc up th
e sides of the cylinder,” Silver said as he traced his fingers over the different markings, “the signature of this Abiathar. But the symbols under these two animals—the lion and the lamb—have stumped you, correct?”

  “Well, Joshua, not entirely,” McDonough interrupted. “We looked at those lines of symbols on the structures under the animals—they look like ornamental or decorative lines. But when you look more closely, there are recurring sets of symbols. One we know—the Hebrew letters kaf, shin, and mem—the letters for mishkan, meaning the residence, or dwelling place. It’s the Hebrew word that was used to mean the Tent of Meeting. Then there are four arches, then kaf, shin, mem repeated again.”

  “What about the rest?” asked Silver.

  “We don’t know,” McDonough admitted. “Some tau symbols, the budding staff, a scorpion. We know the symbols. We just don’t know how—or if—they go together. That’s why we’re here.”

  Now the cleft in Silver’s bushy whiskers stretched from ear to ear.

  “Very well, Dr. Silver. The theatrics are not necessary. What is it that you wish to tell us?”

  The curator pulled himself upright and his self-righteous smile disappeared beneath his whiskers.

  “Of what family was Abiathar . . . what priestly family?” Silver asked.

  “He was an Aaronite,” said Johnson, “a descendant of the high priest Zadok and thus a member of the family line that faithfully carried out the duties of the sanctuary . . . the only priests allowed into the sanctuary of the Temple, the Holy of Holies.”

  “And you’re looking for his plan B? What he would have done if the Temple he built was lost or destroyed, right?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “Okay. There are six sets of symbols creating these ornamental lines on the mezuzah. The first set is the aleph and resh, Abiathar’s signature. The mishkan is the second set, alternating with the four arches, which is the third set. But look here . . . follow me on this. The fourth set, these tau symbols—three together in repeating order—is called the Triple Tau. It is a very old symbol—predates Abiathar by a millennium—and one that has been misused and maligned throughout history. As you both know, the tau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But this Triple Tau design—with the upright T standing on the two Ts lying on their sides, like an H shape—has been part of the Hebrew Kabbala ever since Moses helped the Hebrews escape from Egypt. Supposedly, it was decoded from the Talmudic declaration of God—“I Am that I Am.” Among other things, the symbol means Templum Hierosolyma—the Temple of Jerusalem.”